For example, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2017-146819, a vehicle control apparatus has hitherto been proposed in related art, which includes an automated drive control unit that automatically controls at least one of acceleration-deceleration and steering of a host vehicle so that the host vehicle travels along a route to a destination. Such a vehicle control apparatus controls switching between the automated driving mode and the manual driving mode in response to an operation by a crew (driver) of the vehicle with a switching unit (for example, a selector switch).
The inventors found that, when a request to switch from the automated driving mode to the manual driving mode is submitted, setting of an appropriate transmission gear corresponding to the driving force, the accelerator position, and so on of the vehicle at that time is not performed in the related art. Accordingly, performing gear shift control of an automatic transmission in the manual driving mode in the switching from the automated driving mode to the manual driving mode may cause a gear shift shock in transition of the transmission gear. In addition, when the crew (driver) of the vehicle takes over the operation of the vehicle, for example, the degree of operation of a depressing operation of an accelerator pedal may not be appropriate. Consequently, in particular, for example, when a rapid depressing operation of the accelerator pedal is performed by the driver, the driving force of the vehicle becomes too large to rapidly accelerate the vehicle. As a result, the vehicle speed may be disadvantageously rapidly increased or the distance to a vehicle traveling ahead may be disadvantageously decreased.